Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star

"Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" - sung by Isabella, performed by Gabriella
a spontaneous performance

Cameron's Crawling Improves

Cameron's crawling has improved a lot in just two days' time!

Baby Giggles

Cameron is a very happy baby and he smiles and laughs easily. His brother and sisters love making him giggle.

Cameron is crawling!

Cameron started crawling, so, of course, I had to capture it on video!

Animating Gabby's Art

Gabby drew a really cute bee when she was 4 years old, and she just drew a pretty flower, so her daddy thought it would be fun to create a little animation using them both.

Learning from His Big Sister

Gabby (6 years old) decided to teach Connor (2 years old) how to draw some simple drawings.

First, she showed him how to draw a flower.

Here's Gabby's flower:


Here's Connor's attempt to draw a flower:


Then, she showed him how to draw a dinosaur.

Here's Gabby's dinosaur:


Here's Connor's attempt to draw the same dinosaur:


The really cute thing about this "lesson" is that, when Gabby was showing it all to me, she was pointing out which parts of Connor's flower picture were the leaves, stem and petals and which parts of his dinosaur picture were the teeth, spikes and tail. Can you see those things in his drawings?

Border Collies Are Smart!

Our dog Mercury is so clever! Angelica got him for her fifteenth birthday and is supposed to do his training, but she never taught him more than the sit command. Later, I taught him to lie down when I said, "Down," and it only took him a few minutes to learn and remember it. (Border collies are smart!) Well, she still hasn't taught him anything else, so I decided to work with him again. I taught him "Stay!" and "Come!" And again, it only took a few minutes to teach him. (Of course, there were no distractions around such as other dogs to play with.) He is so EASY to train.

Now I just have to teach him to run with me without grabbing his leash and pulling while jumping around in front of me growling playfully. Right now, whenever I try to run, he thinks it's a game.

Notes From Gabby

Robert has a little sticky note feature on the desktop of his computer where he can quickly type in a note to himself to remind himself of things. Gabby was playing games on his computer, and the browser stopped working, so she decided to let him know.

Typed onto this little note feature was written, "Daddy your conpyooter browk."

I thought it was a really cute message, especially with her phonetic spelling.

A Mommy & Her Boys

Connor, Cameron and I had our photos taken by Robert while we were at the park. Usually, Cameron is quick to smile, but today we were all squinting in the sunlight, and Cameron was overly interested in the grass.

Gabby the Rock Star

Gabby has informed me that she is going to be a rock star. And her friends Hannah and Morgan are in her band.

Summer by Gabriella

Gabby wrote a poem/song this morning.

Summer
by Gabriella (6 years old)

I see sun
in the sky.
It sings
Summer's here.
It's coming
Back for you.

Summer, Summer,
Summer, s-Summer.

You might have a holiday,
Out in the sun,
But you know you know
That it's Summer.

Summer, Summer,
Summer, s-Summer.

Where I Found Our Kitten Today

I heard meowing, so I follow the sound to find out where our kitten Pagan was.

Neither Isabella nor Connor will 'fess up to who put him in the dollhouse.

Our New Kitten

We have finally found a kitten to bring into our family. He is part Russian Blue. When we saw the litter, the owner kept showing us the female tortoise shell kitten and the black male kitten. The others were either already spoken for or not weaned yet. (There were two litters of kittens.) I noticed a bit of grey fur underneath where the tortoise shell kitten was laying. I said, "Aw, that one's kind of fluffy." The owner said, "Oh, that one's a boy too and he's available!" as if he had just remembered. One look at him and Robert and I both knew he was the one. The owner told us he was the one that he would have kept if he was planning on keeping one.

His name is Pagan.
















Even Cameron took an instant liking to him:

Happy Saint Patrick's Day!

Hqappy St. Patrick's Day!

Gabriella, Isabella and Connor all wanted to wish you a happy St. Patrick's Day too.

For Your Listening Pleasure

Don't let the title of this post fool you! LOL!

Everyone Loves A Baby

Isabella loves to kiss and cuddle Cameron. At times, I think she is squeezing him to tightly, but he always laughs and smiles. Today, Connor wanted to join in and give Cameron kisses to.

A 3 Year Old's Understanding Of Death

When Isabella woke up from her nap, I told her the news about Caspian. She cried, "Noooooo!" and, with tears in her eyes, "That means we won't ever see Caspian again just like Gambit." (Gambit, our other cat, died 11 months ago. And because of this, it appears that Bella has a better understanding of death than I thought she would.)

Gabby & Caspian

Gabby is crying about Caspian, naturally. She just told me, "Caspian has always been my pretend prince."

Caspian Died

Robert just called from the vet's, and Caspian had to be put to sleep. He had liver failure and was dying anyway.

I'm in tears.

Our Cat Caspian Is Sick

Our almost-eight-year-old cat, my favorite pet out of all the pets I've ever owned, is very sick. We had an appointment for him to be seen tomorrow, but he was so sick that I was worried he wouldn't make it until tomorrow. I convinced the vet to squeeze him in to be seen today. The news is not good. My husband has now had to take him to their vet hospital branch for tests. If he has what the doctor suspects, it has a 100% mortality rate and I will lose my beloved cat.

I think I'm going to lose my cat, but I am still holding out hope that the tests will find that something else, something treatable, is wrong with him.

A picture of my cat, Caspian:

Family Portraits 2009

Portraits of the family and of just the children Januarey 31st, 2009